“Flowers enough at the funeral,” Ruby said.
“Yeah, but the corpse don’t get to enjoy them.”
They chuckled together. Yasmin saw her to the door. A car at the kerb waited for her, one door swinging open. Yasmin eased her inside.
When she returned to the shop, she went at once to the beauty chair where she began to repack her makeup supplies. Nkata said to her, “What’s she got?”
“Pancreas,” Yasmin said shortly.
“Bad?”
“Pancreas’s always bad, Sergeant. She’s doing chemo, but i’n’t any point. What d’you want, man? I got work to do.”
He approached her but still kept a safe distance between them. “I got a brother,” he said. “He’s Harold, but we called him Stoney. Cos he was stubborn as a stone in a field. A Stonehenge kind of stone, I mean. One you can’t budge no matter what.”
Yasmin paused in putting the makeup away, a brush in her hand. She frowned at Nkata. “So?”
Nkata licked his lower lip. “He’s in Wandsworth. Life.”
Her glance moved away, then back to him. She knew what that meant. Murder. “He do it?”
“Oh yeah. Stoney…Yeah. That was Stoney all the way through. Got a gun somewhere-he’d never say from who-and whacked a bloke in Battersea. He and his mate were trying to carjack his BMW and the bloke didn’t cooperate like they wanted. Stoney shot him in the back of the head. An execution. His mate turned him in.”
She stood there for a moment, as if evaluating this. Then she went back to work.
“Thing is,” Nkata went on, “I could’ve gone the same way and was doing jus’ that, ’cept I figured I was cleverer than Stoney. I could fight better, an’ anyway I wasn’t in’erested in ripping off cars. I had a gang, see, and they were my brothers, more brothers to me’n Stoney could’ve ever been anyway. So I fought with them cos that’s what we did. We fought over turf. This pavement, that pavement, this newsagent’s, that tobacconist. I end up in Casualty with my face split open”-he gestured to his cheek and the scar that ran down it-“and my mum faints dead on the floor when she sees it. I look at her and I look at my dad and I know he means to beat me bloody when we get home, with or without my face done up in stitches. And I see-all of a sudden, this was-that he means to beat me not for myself but cos I hurt Mum like Stoney hurt Mum. And then I really see how they treat her: doctors and nurses in Casualty, this is. They treat her like she did somethin’ wrong, which is what they think she did cos one of her boys ’s in prison and the other’s a Brixton Warrior. And that’s it.” Nkata held out his hands, empty. “A cop makes conversation with me-this is about the fight that got me the scar-and he starts me off in another direction. And I cling to him and I cling to it cos I won’t do to Mum what Stoney did.”
“As easy as that?” Yasmin asked. He could hear the note of scorn in her voice.
“As simple as that,” Nkata corrected her politely. “I wouldn’t ever say it was easy.”
Yasmin finished packing her makeup away. She closed the case with a snap and heaved it from the counter. She carried it to the back of the shop and shoved it on a shelf before she placed one hand on a hip and said, “That all?”
“No.”
“Fine. What else?”
“I live with my mum and dad. Over on Loughborough Estate. I’m goin’ to stay living with them no matter what cos they’re getting older and the older they get, the more dangerous it is over there. For them. I won’t have them facing aggro from smackheads an’ dope dealers an’ pimps. That lot don’t like me, they don’t wan’ to be round me, they sure as hell don’ trust me, and they keep their distance from my mum and my dad, long as I’m there. Tha’s how I want it and I’ll do what it takes to keep it that way.”
Yasmin cocked her head. Her face maintained its distrustful, scornful expression, the same expression she’d worn since he’d met her. “So. Why’re you telling me this?”
“Cos I want you to know the truth. An’ thing is, Yas, the truth i’n’t a road without curves and diversions. So you got to know that, yeah, I was ’tracted to you the first moment I saw you and who wouldn’t be? So, yeah, I wanted you away from Katja Wolfe but not cos I believed you’re meant for a man’s love and not a woman’s love cos I di’n’t know that, did I, how could I. But cos I wanted a chance with you and the only way to get that chance was to prove to you Katja Wolfe wasn’t worthy of what you had to offer. But at the same time, Yas, I liked Daniel from the first ’s well. An’ I could see Daniel liked me back. An’ I bloody well know-knew it then and know it now-how life can be for kids on the street with time on their hands, specially kids like Daniel, without dads in the house. An’ it wasn’t cos I thought you weren’t-aren’t-a good mum, cos I could see that you were. But I thought Dan needed more-he still needs more-an that’s what I came to tell you.”
“That Daniel needs-”
“No. All of it, Yas. Beginning to end.”
He still stood a distance from her, but he thought he could see the muscles move in her smooth dark neck as she swallowed. He thought he could see her heart beat in the vein on her temple as well. But he knew he was trying to think things into a reality defined by his hopes. Let it go, he told himself. Let it be what it is.
“What d’you want now, then?” Yasmin finally asked him. She returned to the beauty chair and picked up the two remaining wigs, holding one under each arm.
Nkata shrugged. “Nothing,” he said.
“An’ that’s the truth?”
“You,” he said. “All right. You. But I don’t know if tha’s even the truth, which is why I don’t want to say it out loud. In bed? Yeah. I want you like that. In bed. With me. But everything else? I don’t know. So tha’s the truth, and it’s what you’re owed. You always deserved it, but you never got it. Not from your husband and not from Katja. I don’t know if you’re even getting it from your current man, but you’re getting it from me. So there was you first an’ foremost in my eyes. And there was Daniel afterwards. An’ it’s never been as simple as you thinking I’m using Dan to get to you, Yasmin. Nothin’ is ever simple as that.”
Everything was said. He felt empty of nearly all that he was: poured onto the lino at her feet. She could step right through him or sweep him up and dump him in the street or…anything, really. He was bare and helpless as the day he’d been born.
They stared at each other. He felt the wanting as he’d not felt it before, as if stating it blatantly had increased it tenfold till it gnawed at him like an animal chewing from the inside out.
Then she spoke. Two words only and at first he didn’t know what she meant. “What man?”
“What?” His lips were dry.
“What current man? You said my current man.”
“That bloke. The last time I was here.”
She frowned. She looked towards the window as if seeing a reflection of the past in the glass. Then back at him. She said, “Lloyd Burnett.”
“You di’n’t say his name. He came in-”
“To get his wife’s wig,” she said.
He said, “Oh,” and felt a perfect fool.
His mobile rang then, which saved him from having to say anything more. He flipped it open, said, “Hang on,” into it, and used the blessed intervention as a means to his escape. He took out one of his cards and he approached Yasmin. She didn’t raise the wig stands to defend herself. She wore only a jersey on top-no pocket available-so he slid his card into the front pocket of her jeans. He was careful not to touch her any more than that.
He said, “I got to take this call. Someday, Yas, I hope it’s you ringing.” He was closer to her than she’d ever let him get. He could smell her scent. He could sense her fear.
He thought, Yas, but he didn’t say it. He left the shop and went towards his car, drawing the mobile to his ear.